This is precisely what happened to me (again) two weeks ago when I read an alarming update from my friend, Robin. Rather than fill you in on the details, I thought I’d let the wonderful woman herself handle the job!

Let’s all give a warm welcome to Robin (and her four-year-old son, who plays a…surprising…role in this tale)!

How does a day that started off normal end with a trip to the doctors, tweezers, and California Raisins?

Let’s start from the beginning…

Baby carrier in tow, I walk into my four year old’s classroom. He is peeing in the toilet, door wide open, a content look on his face – you do you, buddy! By the time I grab his bag, he has finished his business and I notice something on his ear.

In typical mom fashion, I lick my thumb and go to wipe his ear.

“Ow!” he winces.

Well, this can’t be good…

I lean in and take a closer look.

**shudder**

There is something IN HIS EAR.

Instant panic. Is it a bug? Is it poop (he was just in the bathroom)? Is it some other foreign object with which I am less familiar? I grab his hand and leave.

Sitting in the car I’m thinking, “What the actual f*ck is in your ear?” and I am not getting any straight answers. He is clearly exercising his right to plead the fifth. I call the pediatrician, who closes at 4:00, and hope they answer. They answer! I tear out of the parking lot, grilling this poor kid the whole way.

It took the entire drive to the office to get the full story. Apparently a little girl (who will not be named) was eating…wait for it….RAISINS at lunch and decided to put some in his ear. While listening I am wondering, Were you a willing participant in all this? Did she assault you? Should I tell the school? What the f*ck does a parent do in this situation? Also, note to this young lady with the raisins: not the way to make friends!

…Or is it?

Once inside the office the panic begins to subside. Luckily we have an amazing pediatrician who was willing to see us right away and calmly removed said RAISIN from William’s ear…all while providing a teachable moment in a stern doctor voice.

“Now you listen here young man. Just because your mom got an AMAZING story out of this…yeah, no, never mind. Definitely stay friends with that chick.”

The whole drive home, after the raisin extraction, I was thinking to myself what is the name of that cartoon…with the raisins who play instruments…they are in a band?…

Robin, I believe you’re referring to the Emmy Award-winning band, The California Raisins, who catapulted to popularity in the mid-1980s.

Now that things have settled down, I think you and your son can both enjoy (and hear) a trip down memory lane…

A few weeks ago at work, I overheard someone say, “A.S.M.R.” Normally when I overhear things at work, I stare at my computer screen for a minute, open my Google doc titled, “New Ways to Avoid People,” and start furiously typing.

This time I hesitated for only a moment before popping up and walking two cubicles down.

“I’m so sorry I totally meant to didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I heard you say ASMR and I just had to come over. I’m Jules, by the way because despite the fact that I’ve sat two desks away from you for a year I’ve been really busy with this whole Google doc thing. I’ve been listening to ASMR for ages and everything you’re hearing about it is TOTALLY true!”

Many years ago, a fellow blogger clued me into this newfangled phenomenon called Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, or, ASMR. “Just watch this and keep an open mind,” she said. “I swear it’s not dirty.”

As I watched this pretty, whispering blonde woman, grateful I was in the privacy of my own home, I suddenly felt tingles on the sides of my scalp. It was so pleasant, in such a benign and innocent way, that I laughed out loud. It was similar to the feeling I used to get when my sister or a friend would brush and braid my hair. I’m pretty sure it’s exactly how a dog feels when you scratch behind his or her ears in that juuuust right spot.

You know what I’m talkin’ ’bout.

I began a nightly ritual of falling asleep to these videos, my ex chiding me as I’d put on headphones. “Gonna listen to your whispers?” he’d tease. He was the only one who knew about this little routine, because, well, it was a little…weird.

Until now!

As my work conversation proves, ASMR has exploded over the past six years. Some people theorize that the sound of a nurturing woman’s voice brings us back to early childhood. Many people, like me, use it as a sleep aid.

As my little bird noggin spins like a top, everyone around me screams, “OH MY GODDDDD. BARRY CAN WATCH THE DOG AND I’LL TELL MY BOSS TO GO SCRATCH AND I’LL GET THAT SALSA FROM WHOLE FOODS AND YAAAAAAASSSSSS OH MY GOD YAASSSSSSSS!!!!!”

My heart starts racing. Once again, I’m becoming:

Chief Long Memory.

Chief Long Memory, ironically, is the member of the tribe with the least amount of responsibility — no kids, no mortgage, no sick ferret. In these moments, she sighs heavily, straightens her understated though decidedly fabulous headdress and gently reminds everyone what happened last time we thought signing up for horseback riding lessons in Tijuana on Cinqo de Mayo was a flawless endeavor.

“Um, hey, guys, yeah, it’s me. I was just thinking, I don’t know, remember that time we all spent 48 hours scraping neon pink vomit off our bangs –bangs which we did not have when this adventure began– and we couldn’t find Claire for, like, six weeks? I mean I don’t want to compare this latest discussion to the decision to film SHARKNADO 6, but, you ladies aren’t giving me a lot to work with here.”

Oh. You thought I was kidding.

Take, for example, road cycling. For the past year, I’ve been trying to, er, broaden the group’s collective appreciation of what it means to ride very uncomfortable bikes very long distances in very inhospitable weather.

Spoiler alert: it usually ends like this.

I figured my case rested on facts included in this post and this post. (The CliffsNotes version: a 60-mile race in frigid rain with two flat tires and one fall, and a 30-mile epic Arizona mountain climb in oppressive heat with no water.)

What I didn’t realize: the untapped potential in pointing out the hazards of simply dressing for these hellish excursions.

Cue: Janeen.

Janeen is the member of our tribe who’s usually gleefully responding, “ALL THE TIMES!!!” to my sister’s, “WHEN ARE YOU FREE.” Where others go right, Janeen goes left. Where others say “Hell no,” Janeen says, “I’ll bring bean dip.” Despite what you’ve heard me say so far, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Janeen makes my project manager heart go thud. Janeen makes things happen in a way I haven’t seen since Britney and Justin at the 2001 American Music Awards.

Lest you think Janeen’s an irresponsible wild child, she has every single one of her sh*ts together, working one of those smarty-pants jobs my bird brain can’t even understand, raising three children, and running a household in a lighthearted yet no nonsense way that would make Mary Poppins proud.

I mean, she even turns watermelons into sharks, paints like Bob Ross, and curls her hair before meeting us for lunch, for crying out loud.

This is precisely why I should have known that Janeen would serve as my ultimate ally in the Chief Long Memory campaign.

“Oh my god you’ll never guess what happened to me this morning,” she said the other day, tossing her purse down wearily and taking a seat at the dining room table. The tribe stared at her, sipping our wine. She looked…frazzled.

Janeen never looks frazzled.

Not even when she’s teaching Kid #1 to drive.

“I was in the car, all ready for the bike ride,” she began, “but then I realized I had to get Kid #3 something to eat. Mom guilt blah blah. I went back inside…to TOTAL BATSH*T CHAOS.”

She drew a long breath and continued.

“Shoes everywhere. EVERYWHERE! I trip, almost break my neck, get to the kitchen and find an ENTIRE BAG of bagels devoured by the dogs. Then I screamed at Kid #2 about the shoes — it was not my finest hour.”

By now we were all nodding sympathetically and filling her glass to the brim.

Cycling arm warmers: It’s less what they can do for you and more what they can do to you. Photo credit.

“And now I’m late as hell, so I’m trying to hurl myself into them. I can’t get the damn things on, they’re so tight. I’m tugging and tugging and tugging. I finally get one halfway up my arm, and then as I’m giving it one final tug….

“BAM.

“I PUNCHED MYSELF IN THE FACE.

“I CHIPPED MY OWN TOOTH. I chipped. My own. Tooth!”

I managed to stop laughing long enough to ask, “Did you still ride?!”

Janeen answered with this photo:

On second thought, I may still have my work cut out for me in convincing this group to stay inside and do jigsaw puzzles with me.

“So the ultimate goal, really,” the instructor said, brushing back a curly red lock that had broken loose from her bun, “is to start seeing the whole world this way: a universe filled with divinely placed signs and symbols to help guide you.”

I shuffled a large, colorful deck of cards for the tenth time, glancing around the room at the handful of other students. There was the older woman who introduced herself as a teacher’s assistant, a gray-haired man with turquoise beads around his neck, and someone about my age, in her mid-to-late 30’s.

We sat in the brightly colored yoga studio barefooted, having all been instructed to remove our shoes and wash our hands as soon as we had arrived.

“When you first get your cards,” the instructor continued, “you’ll need to cleanse them. For today, you can wave them over one of these candles, but make sure to pause on each one.”

If I burn these I’m going to be really pissed.

She then explained how to develop our own interpretations of the “oracle cards” in our hands – oversized decks depicting vivid images and words.

“They come in all kinds of themed decks,” she went on, adjusting her blue-framed glasses, “and you can mix them however you’re called to.”

We spent the next two hours learning about the importance of color, challenging our initial associations between words and images, and tapping into our “inner knowing.”

Fast forward a week later, and I found myself registering for this:

Yup. That’s right. Part two. I went back for more.

I mean, you can’t be an oracle card expert without learning how to create your own…intuitive…spreads…right?

Before the end of the second class, I was accurately predicting which cards I’d turn over – from a deck I’d never seen before!

So what was I doing there? Did someone drug me? Threaten to steal my dog? Promise free tickets to see Darren Criss and Lea Michele?

Last summer, I started tugging on a thread that quickly unraveled, revealing a treasure trove of paths to explore. By “following my allurements,” as a favorite teacher of mine likes to say, my love of learning and reading returned with a bang, hidden in a pile of metaphysical books and podcasts.

The more I’ve explored, the more I want to know. The humorist in me loves that this is all just another way of following the classic improv mantra, “Yes, and.” The humane educator in me loves that this is just another way to acknowledge we’re all connected. The chipmunk in me loves that this is just another way to guarantee I’ll find some nuts. The project manager in me loves that this isn’t woo-woo at all; as Carl Sagan put it, “science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.”

I’m finally finding words to articulate the strange things I’ve always experienced. And, the funny thing is, the more I’ve started opening up about this, the more I’ve found like-minded chipmunks everywhere. I mean seriously. Ya’ll were holding out.